If you walk down this street...
...you come to this patio...
...and sit under this canopy of grape vines...
...with these people...
...and eat this.
It was "grill night" at the Brummbaerli restaurant. Needless to say I fell way off the vegetarian wagon; had two pieces of grilled pork, a grilled steak, a baked potato the size of a Zeppelin, a large beer, and finally a schnapps (complements of the house.) B. had something similar. We each took about 1/3 of this home in a doggie bag.
The food was great but the most fun were our tablemates. The patio was crowded so we had to share a table with strangers. The woman was plump, in her early 60s, and the guy was kind of portly with a salt and pepper beard, wearing a multi-pocket vest. He looked rather like a trucker.
It was jabbering in German all the way, with B. occasionally telling me what was said. Here's what I observed / learned:
1) These two could eat. They cleaned their plates (no doggie bags) and drank at least three beers each, along with a mineral water between each beer. Then the schnapps. Then a final beer.
2) Turns out the lady lives down the street from B, over a laundry. Not sure what she does for a living, but she likes to walk dogs on the side. Her dog, and a few "client" dogs.
3) She's the local gossip. She knew who was fucking who, who had trouble with the tax authorities, the history of the street, and all kinds of other stuff.
The guy and I sat on one side, the women on the opposite side of the table. Every so often I'd look over at the jabbering woman and I was shocked to see her upper dentures moving around, unable to stay locked in place due to the sheer centrifugal force of the spirited, gossipy jibber-jabber. No mere Polident could contain them---I think she needed some JB Weld or some other kind of industrial adhesive.
But we enjoyed these people because they were down to earth, the kind B. says you used to run into in Vienna, before everyone got all pretentious and uppity and bourgeois, like they are now. (Or as my black friends say, "boo-zhee.") The people in B's building would hardly have been so open, had they suffered the indignity of having us sit at their table with them. They're all "professionals" who make it a point to include their titles alongside their names on the mailbox or on their door so you know their importance. With the exception of B's next door neighbors, who are good people (and, not coincidentally, mere high school graduates) the rest of the Yuppizoidal Ooze in the 19th District wouldn't know how to cope with our table mates. Or us either, for that matter.
But man. It was all I could do to keep from running to the local drug store to pick up a tube of denture adhesive for that lady. She could barely keep her teeth in her head.
Walked back to B's. Put the spare food in the fridge. Cracked a cold bottle of white. Watched the first few minutes of Democracy Now! then went to bed.
Slept late.
-----
Hot today---low 90s. No A/C, of course. Went to the Badegrund and went swimming / laid around reading.
I sketched out a compost bin made with bamboo poles. Will try to make it when I get home, or some facsimile thereof. Went by IKEA on the way home to pick up some herring and those great Swedish potato chips they have.
Hit a traffic jam on the way home---stuck there, sweating like hell, until we could exit and figure out a detour. Turns out it got so hot some asphalt on the highway miles ahead had caved in, and the repair work caused the big jam-up.
But! There's a cool front moving in soon, and the highs some days next week won't exceed 70 F.
